IT Service Desk (ITSD)

ITSD products range from simple call tracking/trouble ticketing (aka “help desk” products) to broad suite solutions encompassing call management, incident management, problem management, IT change management, configuration/inventory repositories, request fulfillment and self-service portals. In their technical platform, ITSD products include knowledge management (knowledge search capability) and workflow engines (managing automated escalation and notification). The most-sophisticated products also may link to dominant brands of corporate portals, external workflow engines, procurement modules and HR systems, or include these as proprietary features. These products integrate with operations management systems for links to event alerts, additional inventory repositories, configuration information and remote control. Product suites must have native support for Web self-service, password automation and e-mail (“native” means that the vendor either has built its own component or has licensed an engine and built value around it). The products must integrate with a range of communications tools, from telephony components to Web chat.

Certain areas of ITSD product functionality address only portions of a given process. IT CM within the tool addresses only the governance (aka production change control) and not the change execution, such as application or software provisioning, patching, or automated configuration setting changes, managed by the CM category. Software code and version is a change execution activity delivered by programming teams during the development process using SCCM tools. However, releasing code into production comes under the CM category. IT change projects, such as coordinating people-intensive IT projects, are change planning activities delivered by PPM products. The self-service portal capability will provide knowledge search and the ability to request service and support; however, the execution of stand-alone automated restore, also called “self-healing” — in which the user or help desk personnel are not involved — is part of the CM category. Only products that are positioned as ITSDs are included in the ITSD category. Products positioned as portals, workflow platforms or integration brokers are tracked in the AIM category. The fraction of vendor revenue from customer support software, sold as “help desk,” is tracked as CRM software.